The P.P.O.W gallery has a very distinctive aesthetic. The artists whose careers have been supported and fostered by this gallery gravitate towards an uneasy depiction of humanity. Over the last few years, this art space has gathered sculptural and two-dimensional work that challenges power structures and political conventions.

“Hunter Gatherer” is no different. In this piece, Julie Heffernan attempts to re-imagine Western visual history by putting naked portraits of herself as well as smaller portraits of historically significant feminists at the forefront of Old Master Paintings. “Heffernan consciously depicts women standing in salon-style painting galleries that evoke grand museums around the globe” in order to include them within Western visual history.

This month, Katja Loher is transforming the C24 Gallery into “an ethereal world in which the viewer journeys through an enchanted universe altered by vision, sound, and scent.”

In this exhibit, each of Loher’s circular sculptures, which play videos inspired by nature and its self-organizing systems, are matched with unique aromas and sound. The result? A fully immersive sensorial experience where viewers’ senses of sight, smell, and sound are engaged and stimulated.

Daniel Arsham might just be the world’s most famous installation artist. His work has been shown all over the world from Paris, Tokyo, Washington, and New York and his exhibits are supported by celebrities such as Pharrell Williams.

“3018” marks Arsham’s fifteenth exhibit with Perrotin since he joined the gallery in 2005. In this exhibit, the artist continues to explore his signature “Future Relic” theme—“an ongoing project that envisions how common objects of our time will be seen by future archeologists.”

The highlights of this show are Arsham’s eroded sculptural models of two cars - a 1981 Delorean and a 1961 Ferrari 2050GT California, both of which are reminiscent of cars featured in cult classics Back to the Future and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, respectively. These two pieces have been in development for the last nine years, as Arsham took his Instagram last month to post a sketch of these sculptures dated 2009.

In “Indigenous Woman,” artist Martine Gutierrez uses high fashion magazine’s glossy framework to play with perception and to retake agency over her representation as “a transwoman, a latinx woman, a woman of indigenous descent, a femme artist and maker.”

Gutierrez made sure that for this show the representation of her intersectional identity was fully within her autonomy. For the sake of said autonomy, “all photography, modeling, styling, makeup, hair, lighting, graphic design, and product design” were executed by the artist.

Gutierrez uses the representation of her fluid identity, of her delicate features, curvaceous body, and full lips to push for a different portrayal of “millennial nonbinary transwomen of color.” In here this artist uses her image as a means to “subvert cis, white, Western standards of beauty and raise questions about inclusivity, appropriation, and consumerism.”

This month Brooklyn based painter Hayley Josephs is inviting people to explore the beautiful darkness that’s hidden within her inner world. Viewers will find Joseph’s enigmatic paintings of powerful, archetypal women, often engaged in private activities or rituals that can be both disturbing and absurd. Her female portraits are painted on blue canvases and feature a palette of rich, saturated colors that help enhance her subjects’ intense expressions.

Josephs’ ability to capture facial and bodily expressions of polar emotions that range from fear and trauma to tranquility and happiness allow her to bring to light the complexity of modern womanhood, a reality and/or a state of mind that is currently mediated by Trump’s increased push for the regulation of the female body as well as the coalification of women fighting for equality through social campaigns such as the #MeToo movement.

“The Least Orthodox Goddess IV” is a group exhibit that features the work of an intersectionality diverse group of artists including Felipe Baeza, Darío Calmese, David Antonio Cruz, Delano Dunn, Jonathan Gardenhire, Billy Ray Morgan, Zachary Richardson, and Kiyan Williams.

The portraits of dark and light skinned bodies are unified by the curator’s effort to “dive into the idea of what constitutes female identity within the contemporary context: it looks at what it means to be a ‘goddess’ outside of the constraints of physiological or socially constructed expectations: what it means to be cis vs trans vs. non-binary, what it means to be of color vs black vs. white vs. brown, what it means to be subjugated and/or be venerated.”

It is because many of the female-identified persons depicted through this show’s portraiture have been victims of violence due to their gender, race, cultural affiliation and/or sexuality that this exhibit comes together not only to acknowledge violence towards those who have been othered but to “celebrate those who have been rendered invisible or unimportant by sharing their stories.”

whoisdamaster
Gonna be a busy month! Mark your calendars. Stranger Fruit will be in a solo show @bricartsmedia, opening Sept 12. Come thru and bring a friend!
#Repost @bricartsmedia (@get_repost)
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Opening on September 12 from 7-9pm will be an exhibition of photographic work by Jon Henry (@whoisdamaster) in the main Hallway of BRIC House. Henry's ongoing project, "Stranger Fruit," examines the mother-son relationship as a manifestation of the fear of loosing a loved one, particularly in response to the senseless murder of African-American men at the hands of authorities. Henry was selected as the "Best in Show" winner of last year's OPEN (C)ALL: TRUTH exhibition. ------------------------------------
#photography, #motherandson, #pieta, #gunviolence, #jonhenry, #strangerfruit, #policebrutality

‘Stranger Fruit’ is Jon Henry’s ongoing photographic project, one that was conceived as a response “to the endemic murder of African-American men at the hands of authorities.”

Over the last few years, Henry’s cameras have turned to the mothers of America’s black youth, to the women that have to endure this monumental loss and continue surviving. Henry’s photographs depict “mothers alone and holding their sons in the classic pietà pose—that of the grieving Virgin Mary cradling the dead Christ,” in order to explore the resilience, love, and tenderness that Black families have shown in the face of violence and heartbreak.